


A Baker Street Christmas Carol

by doctornerdington



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Charles Dickens - Freeform, Christmas, F/M, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M, Pre-Slash, Remix, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2695730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock Holmes is haunted by three spirits, and comes to learn the true meaning of Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mycroft's Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> An advent fic: a new chapter will be posted each advent Sunday, with the final chapter posted on Christmas Eve. 
> 
> Warning for shameless and extensive appropriation of Dicken's text.

Mycroft was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Sherlock signed it, and Sherlock’s name was good. Old Mycroft was as dead as a door-nail. 

And Sherlock knew he was dead! Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Sherlock and he were brothers, and what’s more, partners for I don’t know how many years. Sherlock was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Sherlock appeared not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. I say “appeared,” for though the man himself would scorn to admit the existence of tender feelings within his breast, yet they must exist, as they do in all men.

The mention of Mycroft’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Mycroft was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind. 

Sherlock never painted out Old Mycroft’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Sherlock and Mycroft. The firm was known as Holmes Bros. Sometimes people new to the business called Sherlock Sherlock, and sometimes Mycroft, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. 

Oh! But he was an exacting task-master, Sherlock! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his features, thinned his lip, raised his haughty cheek, stiffened his gait; emptied his eye; and spoke out shrewdly in his low voice. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office throughout the year; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. 

External heat and cold had little influence on Sherlock. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Sherlock never did. 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Sherlock, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Sherlock. But what did he care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was the solitary path chosen by Sherlock Holmes. 

Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—Sherlock sat busy at his desk. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. 

The door of Sherlock’s inner chamber was open that he might keep his eye upon his head clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Sherlock had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Sherlock kept the coal-box in his own room, so that the clerk must cross the floor before him to fill a shovel, and his pride would not allow this. Instead, he tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed. 

“A merry Christmas, Sherlock! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of John Watson, the doctor who had attended Mycroft in his final illness, and who had somehow never lost the habit of stopping in to pay his respects to the brother of his late patient. Now, he came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. 

“Bah!” said Sherlock, “Humbug!” 

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this fellow John, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. “Christmas a humbug!” he exclaimed. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?” 

“I do,” said Sherlock. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re dull enough.” 

“Come, then,” returned John gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re sharp enough.” 

“What else can I be,” returned Sherlock, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour wiser? If I could work my will,” said he indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” 

“Sherlock!” pleaded the other. 

“John!” returned the other sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.” 

“Keep it!” repeated John. “But you don’t keep it.” 

“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Sherlock. “Much good may it do you!” 

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned John. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” 

The clerk outside the door involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark. 

“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Sherlock in surprise, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,” he added, turning to John. “I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.” 

“Don’t be angry, my friend. Come! Take Christmas dinner with us to-morrow.” 

“With ‘us’?” said Sherlock. “Who are you to dine with? You are as alone as I: your parents are dead; your wife has absconded with a scoundrel – yes, yes, I can read the truth on your face – and you’ve no children, no bachelor colleagues left to speak of. Who, pray, will be attending this illustrious dinner?” 

“I am not without friends, Sherlock,” John replied gently. “Neither of us need be alone.” 

“Friends!” growled Sherlock, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!” 

John sighed. “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?” 

“Good afternoon,” said Sherlock. 

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry Christmas, Sherlock!” 

“Good afternoon!” said Sherlock. 

“And a Happy New Year!” 

“Good afternoon!” said Sherlock. 

John left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Sherlock. 

“There’s another fellow,” muttered Sherlock; who overheard him: “my clerk, with five shillings a week, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.” 

***

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened and the cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. 

Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Sherlock’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of 

“God bless you, merry gentleman!  
May nothing you dismay!” 

Sherlock seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost. 

At length the hour of shutting down arrived. With an ill-will Sherlock dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat. 

“You’ll want all day off to-morrow, I suppose, Lestrade?” said Sherlock. 

“If quite convenient, sir.” 

“It’s not convenient,” said Sherlock, “and it’s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-used, I’ll be bound?” 

The clerk smiled faintly. 

“And yet,” said Sherlock, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I must go without your admittedly insipid and plodding assistance for a full day.” 

The clerk observed that it was only once a year. 

“A poor excuse for abandoning your employer every twenty-fifth of December!” said Sherlock, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. “But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.” 

The clerk promised that he would; and Sherlock walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt. 

Sherlock took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy chop house, eating barely a morsel; and having read all the newspapers and most of the weeklies, went home. He lived in chambers in Baker Street which he had once shared with his deceased brother. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Sherlock, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The small courtyard was so dark that even Sherlock, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. 

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Sherlock had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Sherlock had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Sherlock, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Mycroft’s face. 

Mycroft’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the courtyard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Sherlock as Mycroft used to look: with a faint wrinkle of condescension upon its brow. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression. 

As Sherlock looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. 

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he was a student of rationality and reason, and knew his vision must be deceiving him. And so he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle. 

He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Mycroft’s head sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said “Pooh, pooh!” and closed it with a bang. 

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Sherlock was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went. 

Up Sherlock went, not caring a button for the dark. Darkness is no more frightening than light, and Sherlock liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that. 

Sitting-room, bedroom, study. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Study as usual. 

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire. 

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles; and yet that face of Mycroft, now a year dead, swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of Mycroft’s head on every one. 

“Humbug!” said Sherlock; and walked across the room. The truth was, he felt the loss of his brother very keenly, for he was the only fellow in the world with whom Sherlock had felt affinity. This strange vision had shaken him, badly, although he would be loath to admit such a weakness even to himself.

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house. 

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Sherlock then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. 

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door. 

“It cannot be!” said Sherlock. “I won’t believe it.” 

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him; Mycroft’s Ghost!” and fell again. 

The same face: the very same. Mycroft in his usual waistcoat, trousers, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Sherlock observed it closely) of books and papers, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Sherlock, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind. 

Though Sherlock looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of its clothing; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses. 

Caustic and cold as ever, Sherlock asked, “What do you want with me?” 

“Much!”—Mycroft’s voice, no doubt about it. 

“Who are you?” 

“Ask me who I was.” 

“Who were you then?” said Sherlock, raising his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.” 

“In life I was your brother, Mycroft Holmes.” 

“Can you—can you sit down?” asked Sherlock, looking doubtfully at him. 

“I can.” 

“Do it, then.” 

Sherlock asked the question, because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. 

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost. 

“I don’t,” said Sherlock. “I am a man of reason, as was the man you seem to resemble.” 

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?” 

“I don’t know,” said Sherlock. 

“Why do you doubt your senses?” 

“Because,” said Sherlock, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a mouthful of wine. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are, and I trust the soundness of my mind and the application of my reason a thousand times more than I trust to senses that are so easily misled!” 

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Sherlock held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast! 

Sherlock fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face. 

“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?” 

“Man of reason!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?” 

“I… do,” stammered Sherlock. “I think I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?” 

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!” 

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands. 

“You are fettered,” said Sherlock, trembling. “Tell me why?” 

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?” 

Sherlock trembled more and more. 

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It is full as heavy and as long as this. It is a ponderous chain!” 

Sherlock glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing. 

“Mycroft,” he said, imploringly. “My brother, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Mycroft!” 

“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Sherlock Holmes, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our office door or the confines of my study—mark me!—in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow path between our office and our home; and weary journeys lie before me now!” 

It was a habit with Sherlock, whenever he became thoughtful, to grasp great handfuls of his unruly hair until it stood up in jagged curls. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees. 

“You must have been very slow about it, Mycroft,” Sherlock observed, in a calculating manner, though with humility and deference. 

“Slow!” the Ghost repeated. 

“A year dead,” mused Sherlock. “And travelling all the time!” 

“The whole time,” said the Ghost. “No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.” 

“You travel fast?” said Sherlock. 

“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. 

“You might have got over a great quantity of ground in a year,” said Sherlock. 

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.  
“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!” 

“But you were always a good man of reason, Mycroft, and of business,” faltered Sherlock, who now began to apply this to himself. 

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. Curse my ‘reason’ that did not see that the dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” 

It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. 

“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.” 

“I will,” said Sherlock. “But don’t be hard upon me! Don’t be, Mycroft! Pray!” 

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.” 

It was not an agreeable idea. Sherlock shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow. 

“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the Ghost. “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Sherlock, and the last kindness a fond older brother can do for the younger.” 

“You were always good to me,” Sherlock murmured. 

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.” 

Sherlock’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done. 

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Mycroft?” he demanded, in a faltering voice. 

“It is.” 

“I—I think I’d rather not,” said Sherlock. 

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.” 

“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Mycroft?” hinted Sherlock. 

“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!” 

When Sherlock ventured to raise his eyes again, he found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm. 

The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. 

It beckoned Sherlock to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Mycroft’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Sherlock stopped. 

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. 

Sherlock followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. 

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Mycroft’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Sherlock in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever. 

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home. 

Sherlock closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.


	2. The First of the Three Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An advent fic: a new chapter will be posted each advent Sunday, with the final chapter posted on Christmas Eve.
> 
> Warning for shameless and extensive appropriation of Dicken's text.

When Sherlock awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ice-cold eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour. 

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve! 

“It isn’t possible,” said Sherlock, “that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!” 

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief; thus far, the world continued to conform to rational and scientific principles. 

Sherlock went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought. It made no sense whatever. 

Mycroft’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, “Was it a dream or not?” 

Sherlock lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed. 

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter past,” said Sherlock, counting. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“Half-past!” said Sherlock. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter to it,” said Sherlock. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“The hour itself,” said Sherlock, triumphantly, “and nothing else!” 

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn. 

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Sherlock, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow. 

It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible. 

Even this, though, when Sherlock looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever. 

“Are you the Spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Sherlock. 

“I am.” 

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance. 

“Who, and what are you?” Sherlock demanded. 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” 

“Long Past?” inquired Sherlock: observant of its dwarfish stature. 

“No. Your past.” 

Sherlock then made bold to inquire what business brought him there. 

“Your welfare!” said the Ghost. 

Sherlock expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately: 

“Your reclamation, then. Take heed!” 

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm. 

“Rise! and walk with me!” 

The grasp, though gentle, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication. 

“I am a mortal,” Sherlock remonstrated, “and liable to fall.” 

“Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this!” 

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground. 

“Good Heaven!” said Sherlock, clasping his hands together as he looked about him. “I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!” And in his astonishment and wonder, he forgot the impossibility of the thing, and simply gaped. 

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten! 

“Your lip is trembling,” said the Ghost. “And what is that upon your cheek?” 

Sherlock muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was nothing; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would. 

“You recollect the way?” inquired the Spirit. 

“Remember it!” cried Sherlock with fervour; “I could walk it blindfold.” 

“Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!” observed the Ghost. “Let us go on.” 

They walked along the road, Sherlock recognising every gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it! 

“These are but shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “They have no consciousness of us.” 

The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Sherlock knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Sherlock? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him? 

“The school is not quite deserted,” said the Ghost. “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.” 

Sherlock said he knew it. 

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat. 

They went, the Ghost and Sherlock, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Sherlock sat down upon a form, and sighed to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be. 

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Sherlock with a softening influence, and it seemed for a time that he would weep. “Poor little boy!” he whispered, and then he did weep a little. 

“I wish,” Sherlock muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: “but it’s too late now.” 

“What is the matter?” asked the Spirit. 

“Nothing,” said Sherlock. “Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something: that’s all.” 

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it did so, “Let us see another Christmas!” 

Sherlock’s former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about, Sherlock knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, with all the other schoolboys gone home for the jolly holidays. 

He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Sherlock looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door. 

It opened; and a young man, a dozen years older than Sherlock, strode in, and addressed him warmly as “brother mine.” 

“I have come to bring you home, brother!” said the young man. 

“Home, Mycroft?” returned the boy. 

“Yes!” said the young man, with a pleased glint in his eye. “Home, for good. Home, forever. Father has softened in his most recent infirmity, Sherlock. He regrets his rash decisions, and he misses his sons; this he told me to my face, and sent me in a coach to bring you before I could even unpack my own valise. And you are never to come back here; I am to find you a proper school to suit your unique gifts. But first, we’re to be together for Christmas, the three of us.” 

“You astonish me!” exclaimed the boy. 

Mycroft gave the narrow smile that passed for an expression of great joy in a young man the world had taught to be cynical and reserved. He grasped Sherlock’s shoulder, and steered him towards the door; and he, nothing loth to go, accompanied him. 

A terrible voice in the hall cried, “Bring down Master Sherlock’s box, there!” and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on Master Sherlock with a ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his brother into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties to the young people: at the same time, sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of “something” to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman, but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not. Master Sherlock’s trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, the boys bade the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove swiftly down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray. 

“At one time,” said the Ghost, “your brother had a large heart!” 

“So he had,” said Sherlock. “You are quite right. I will not gainsay it, Spirit.” 

“His life,” continued the Ghost, “could have been larger and fuller than either of you could imagine. It did not have to end in solitude and misery.” 

“Perhaps you are right. And yet, what chance for happiness did he have – did either of us have – with a tyrant father and meeting nothing but cruelty and mistreatment at the hands of our fellow creatures? And still, I miss him. I miss him. At least with Mycroft, I was not alone.”

“But his death brought you into acquaintance with a doctor; the only man who cares a whit for you now that Mycroft is dead: your friend John Watson!” 

Sherlock seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, “Yes.” 

Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up. 

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Sherlock if he knew it. 

“Know it!” said Sherlock. “I was apprenticed here!” 

They went in. At sight of a middle-aged gentlewoman in a bright shawl, sitting behind such a high desk, that if she had been two inches taller she must have knocked her head against the ceiling, Sherlock cried in great excitement: 

“Why, it’s Mrs. Hudson! Bless her heart; it’s Mrs. Hudson alive again!” 

Mrs. Hudson laid down her pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. She rubbed his hands; adjusted her capacious shawl; laughed all over herself, from her shoes to her organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, kindly voice: 

“Yoo hoo, there! Holmes! Sherlock!” 

Sherlock’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-’prentice. 

“Victor Trevor, to be sure!” said Sherlock to the Ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Victor. Poor boy.” 

“Yoo hoo, my boys!” said Mrs. Hudson. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Victor. Christmas, Sherlock! Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Hudson, with a sharp clap of her hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson!” 

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had ’em up in their places—four, five, six—barred ’em and pinned ’em—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses. 

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Hudson, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Vic! Chirrup, Sherlock!” 

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with Mrs. Hudson looking fondly on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night. 

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When this result was brought about, Mrs. Hudson, clapping her hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish. 

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then Mrs. Hudson stood out to dance with her Head Clerk. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking. 

But if they had been twice as many—ah, four times—Mrs. Hudson would have been a match for them. A positive light appeared to issue from her eyes. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of her next. And when she and her Clerk had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Mrs. Hudson “cut”—cut so deftly, that she appeared to wink with her legs, and came upon her feet again without a stagger. 

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mrs. Hudson took her station at the side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two ’prentices, she did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop. 

During the whole of this time, Sherlock had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Trevor were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear. 

“A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.” 

“Small!” echoed Sherlock. 

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Mrs. Hudson: and when he had done so, said, 

“Why! Is it not? She has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that she deserves this praise?” 

“It isn’t that,” said Sherlock, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. She had the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that her power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness she gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” 

He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped. 

“What is the matter?” asked the Ghost. 

“Nothing particular,” said Sherlock. 

“Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted. 

“No,” said Sherlock, “No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.” 

His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Sherlock and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air. 

“My time grows short,” observed the Spirit. “Quick!” 

This was not addressed to Sherlock, or to any one whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Sherlock saw himself. He was older now; in the early years of manhood. His face had not the cold and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of cerebral withdrawal and extreme reserve. There was a guarded, restless motion in the eye, an impatience which showed where the shadow of the growing tree would fall. 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of his fellow apprentice, Victor Trever: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past. 

“It matters little,” he said, softly. “To you, very little. Another love has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.” 

“What has displaced you?” he rejoined. 

“Ambition. You are married to your work, Sherlock.” 

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as stagnation; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as seeking advancement!” 

“You fear love too much,” he answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the fear of contamination by love. I have seen your sentiments fall off one by one, until the master-passion – knowledge! advancement! – engrosses you. Have I not?” 

“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown in ambition, what then? I am not changed towards you.” He shook his head. “Am I?” 

“Our arrangement is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our place in the world by patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.” 

“I was a boy,” he said impatiently. 

“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” he returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.” 

“Have I ever sought release?” 

“In words. No. Never.” 

“In what, then?” 

“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the man, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!” 

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.” 

“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” he answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a complacent and dull-witted lad like me? I cannot. With a full heart for the love of him you once were, I say that we must part.” 

Sherlock was about to speak; but with his head turned from him, Victor resumed. 

“You may—the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will—have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as useless dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!” 

He left him, and they parted. 

“Spirit!” said Sherlock, “show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?” 

“One shadow more!” exclaimed the Ghost. 

“No more!” cried Sherlock. “No more. I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!” 

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next. 

They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat Victor Trevor, slightly aged about the face and rounder in the middle, but happy – so happy – for the years. It seemed he was in a state of dreamy contemplation, for he gazed into the flames and smiled softly to himself for many long minutes together. 

But now a quick step at the door was heard, and Victor rose to his feet with a flush of pleasure and a wide grin of anticipation on his face. A man entered, laden with Christmas presents and a fat goose in a sack; and Victor sprang to attend him, divested him of his many parcels and his coat and muffler. 

And now Sherlock looked on more attentively than ever, when Victor, having his companion leaning fondly on him, sat down with him at his own fireside; and the two entwined their arms and looked the very picture of domestic contentment, and when Sherlock thought that such a position might once have been his, and been a comfort in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed. 

“Vic,” said the man, turning to his companion with a smile, “I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.” 

“Who was it?” 

“Guess!” 

“How can I? Tut, don’t I know?” he added in the same breath, laughing as he spoke. 

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His brother lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe.” 

“Spirit!” said Sherlock in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.” 

“I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they are, do not blame me!” 

“Remove me!” Sherlock exclaimed, “I cannot bear it!” 

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it. 

“Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!” 

In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Sherlock observed that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the corner of his gown, and by a sudden action pulled it up and over the luminous head. 

The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the gown covered its whole form; but though Sherlock pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground. 

He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the gown another squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week: "The Second of the Three Spirits."
> 
> Comments always greatly appreciated. And come find me on Tumblr -- I'm doctornerdington over there, as well


	3. The Second of the Three Spirits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for shameless and extensive appropriation of Dicken's text.

Awaking suddenly, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Sherlock had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger dispatched to him through Mycroft’s intervention. But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise. 

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think—as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too—at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and crept to the door. 

The moment Sherlock’s hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed. 

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Sherlock’s time, or Mycroft’s, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Sherlock, as he came peeping round the door. 

“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know me better, man!” 

Sherlock entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not quite the cold and imperious Sherlock he had been; and though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them. 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!” 

Sherlock did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust. 

“You have never seen the like of me before!” exclaimed the Spirit. 

“Never,” Sherlock made answer to it. 

“Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?” pursued the Phantom. 

“I don’t think I have,” said Sherlock. “I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?” 

“More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost. 

“Impossible!” muttered Sherlock. 

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose. 

“Spirit,” said Sherlock submissively, “conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me learn.” 

“Touch my robe!” 

Sherlock did as he was told, and held it fast. 

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms. 

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain. 

For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. 

Soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Sherlock beside him in a baker’s doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was. 

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too. 

“Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Sherlock. 

“There is. My own.” 

“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Sherlock. 

“To any kindly given. To a poor one most.” 

“How? Why to a poor one most?” asked Sherlock. 

“Because it needs it most.” 

They went on, invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall. 

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Sherlock’s clerk’s; for there he went, and took Sherlock with him, holding to his robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Gregory Lestrade’s dwelling with the sprinkling of his torch.

Then up rose Mrs. Lestrade, his dear Molly, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by her eldest daughter, also brave in ribbons; while his son plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes. And now the two smaller Lestrades, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Lestrades danced about the table, blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled. 

“Whatever is keeping your father then?” said Molly. “And your sister, Little Moll?” 

“No, no! There’s father coming,” cried the two young Lestrades, who were everywhere at once. 

So in came Gregory, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Little Moll upon his shoulder. Alas for Little Moll, she bore a little crutch, and had her limbs supported by an iron frame. 

“And how did Little Moll behave?” asked Mrs. Lestrade. 

“As good as gold,” said Gregory, “and better. Somehow she gets thoughtful, sitting by herself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. She told me, coming home, that she hoped the people saw her in the church, because she was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.” 

Gregory’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Little Moll was growing strong and hearty. 

Her active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Little Moll before another word was spoken, escorted by her brother and sister to her stool before the fire; and while Gregory, turning up his cuffs—as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby—compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer; the two ubiquitous young Lestrades went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession. 

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Molly made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; the eldest son mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; the eldest girl sweetened up the apple-sauce. Gregory took Little Moll beside him in a tiny corner at the table; she, so very like her mother, had prize of place in his gentlest affections. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Molly, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Little Moll, excited by the two young Lestrades, beat on the table with the handle of her knife, and feebly cried Hurrah! 

There never was such a goose. Gregory said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Molly said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Lestrades in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates having being changed, Molly left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses—to take the pudding up and bring it in. 

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Lestrades became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed. 

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Molly entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Lestrade would have blushed to hint at such a thing. 

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Lestrade family drew round the hearth, in what Greg Lestrade called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Greg’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle. 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Greg served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then he proposed: 

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!” 

Which all the family re-echoed. 

“God bless us every one!” said Little Moll, the last of all. 

She sat very close to her father’s side upon her little stool. Greg held her withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep her by his side, and dreaded that she might be taken from him. 

“Spirit,” said Sherlock, with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if Little Moll will live.” 

“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.” 

“No, no,” said Sherlock. “Oh, no, kind Spirit! say she will be spared.” 

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find her here. But what of that? To a solitary man of reason such as yourself, surely the death of a single weak child is simply the natural order of things.” 

Sherlock hung his head to hear his own beliefs quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief. 

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you yourself are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” 

Sherlock bent before the Ghost’s rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on hearing his own name. 

“Mr. Holmes!” said Gregory; “A toast to Mr. Holmes, the Founder of the Feast!” 

“The Founder of the Feast indeed!” cried Molly, reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.” 

“My dear,” said Gregory, “the children! Christmas Day.” 

“It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “on which one drinks the health of such a cold, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Holmes. You know he is, Gregory! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!” 

“Oh, I do!” returned he. “And still, I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, most of all. For aren’t we happy here together, and warm, and full of goose? I can guarantee you that he cannot say the same, even on Christmas Day.” 

“Well, I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,” said Molly, “with the hope the next year will teach him to be a better man. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy new year!” 

The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness. Little Moll drank it last of all, but she didn’t care twopence for it. Sherlock was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full five minutes. 

After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Sherlock the Baleful being done with. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Little Moll, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed. 

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were a handsome family, but they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Gregory might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Sherlock had his eye upon them, and especially on Little Moll, until the last. 

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as Sherlock and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour’s house.

But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though little knew the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas! 

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night. 

“What place is this?” asked Sherlock. 

“A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,” returned the Spirit. “But they know me. See!” 

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song—it had been a very old song when he was a boy—and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again. 

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Sherlock hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped—whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Sherlock’s horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth. 

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed. 

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself. 

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Sherlock, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him. 

It was a great surprise to Sherlock, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to Sherlock, while thus engaged, to emerge once again into the light and find himself in a bright, dry room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at the familiar face of one Dr. John Watson! 

At first, Sherlock was so surprised that he scarcely had eyes for anything but the good doctor’s face, which looked careworn, and less animated than Sherlock would have wished. For such a man, he thought, such a kind and good and patient man, deserved to find nothing but happiness in all things. But in time, he began to look around the small set of rooms John had taken when his wife had absconded. And though Sherlock’s eyes roved every corner and searched out every clew as to John’s life and habits, for all of John’s Christmas cheer the day previous, Sherlock could find no trace of merriment here; no sprig of holly tucked on the mantle, no gaily coloured cards tacked up on the wall. 

And quite the contrary to what John had claimed, about taking Christmas dinner with friends, Sherlock was surprised indeed to find him tucking into a solitary bachelor dinner of bread and cheese and chops. 

“Why is he alone? He said he had friends, Spirit!” Sherlock exclaimed. “He said that he – that neither of us – should be alone!” 

“He has his pride, perhaps,” the Spirit answered. “He does not want to need you as he does.” 

“He? Need me?” Sherlock was fairly staggered by the idea. 

The Spirit made no reply, but looked on Sherlock’s face in such a gentle and kind sort of way that Sherlock was again made speechless.

And then John raised his solitary glass to the empty room. 

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the man, whatever he is!” said John. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. To Sherlock!” And saying this, drained his glass.

Sherlock was confounded; he felt as if the room was spinning, and saw nothing but the infinite tenderness of John’s face. He would not have known how to respond even if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by the doctor; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels. 

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but Sherlock’s inner vision rested always on his Doctor. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Sherlock his precepts. 

It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Sherlock had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Sherlock remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Sherlock had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey. 

“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Sherlock. 

“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.” 

“To-night!” cried Sherlock. 

“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.” 

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment. 

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Sherlock, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?” 

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.” 

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. 

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost. 

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. 

Sherlock started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. 

“Spirit! are they yours?” Sherlock could say no more. 

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Apathy. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!” 

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Sherlock. 

“Surely it is not your business to care for the welfare of strange children,” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Surely Compassion is anathema to Reason?” 

The bell struck twelve. 

Sherlock looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of brother Mycroft, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a third solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week: "The Last of the Spirits."
> 
> Final chapter on Christmas Eve.
> 
> Comments always greatly appreciated. And come find me on Tumblr -- I'm doctornerdington over there, as well


	4. The Last of the Spirits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for shameless and extensive appropriation of Dicken's text.

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Sherlock bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. 

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded. 

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved. 

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” said Sherlock. 

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand. 

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Sherlock pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?” 

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received. 

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Sherlock feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover. 

But Sherlock was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black. 

“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to teach me, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?” 

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them. 

“Lead on!” said Sherlock. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!” 

The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Sherlock followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along. 

They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; amongst the merchants who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Sherlock had seen them often. 

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Sherlock advanced to listen to their talk. 

“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s dead.” 

“When did he die?” inquired another. 

“Last night, I believe.” 

“Why, what was the matter with him?” asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. “I thought he’d never die.” 

“God knows,” said the first, with a yawn. 

“What has he done with his money?” asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock. 

“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, yawning again. “Left it to the college, perhaps. He hasn’t left it to me. That’s all I know.” 

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh. 

“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; “for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?” 

“I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,” observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. “But I must be fed, if I make one.” 

Another laugh. 

“Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,” said the first speaker, “for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go, if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met. Bye, bye!” 

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Sherlock knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation. 

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Sherlock listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here. 

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were university men: prestigious, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem: in a scientific point of view, that is; strictly in a scientific point of view. 

“How are you?” said one. 

“How are you?” returned the other. 

“Well!” said the first. “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?” 

“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it?” 

“Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not a skater, I suppose?” 

“No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!” 

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting. 

Sherlock was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to deduce what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Mycroft, his old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the Future. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his own edification, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy. 

He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this. 

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold. 

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Sherlock had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery. 

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement. 

Sherlock and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh. 

“Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” cried she who had entered first. “Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it!” 

“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other two an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.” 

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again. 

While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two. 

“Anyway!” cried the woman. “Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.” 

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. 

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he kinder in his lifetime? If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.” 

“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said Mrs. Dilber. “It’s a judgment on him.” 

“I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” replied the woman; “and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.” 

But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found there was nothing more to come. 

“That’s your account,” said Joe, “and I wouldn’t give another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who’s next?” 

Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner. 

“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said old Joe. “That’s your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of being so liberal and knock off half-a-crown.” 

“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first woman. 

Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. 

“What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed-curtains!” 

“Ah!” returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. “Bed-curtains!” 

“You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe. 

“Yes I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?” 

“You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.” 

“I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you, Joe,” returned the woman coolly. “Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now.” 

“His blankets?” asked Joe. 

“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the woman. “He isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I dare say.” 

“I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? Eh?” said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up. 

“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman. “I an’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah! you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.” 

“What do you call wasting it?” asked old Joe. 

“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied the woman with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico an’t good enough for such a purpose, it isn’t good enough for anything. It’s quite becoming enough to the body.” 

Sherlock listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself. 

“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. “This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!” 

“Spirit!” said Sherlock, shuddering from head to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!” 

He recoiled, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language. 

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Sherlock glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man. 

Sherlock glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Sherlock’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side. 

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal! 

No voice pronounced these words in Sherlock’s ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly! 

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Sherlock did not dare to think. 

“Spirit!” he said, “this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!” 

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head. 

“I understand you,” Sherlock returned, “and I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.” 

Again it seemed to look upon him. 

“Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,” said Sherlock; “or this dark chamber will be forever present to me.” 

The Ghost raised its arms and conducted him mysteriously through several streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Sherlock looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Gregory Lestrade’s house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found Molly and the children seated round the fire. 

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Lestrades were as still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at the eldest, who had a book before him. Molly was engaged in sewing. But surely they were all very quiet! 

“‘And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.’” 

Where had Sherlock heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The eldest child must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on? 

Molly laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her face. 

“The colour hurts my eyes,” she said. 

The colour? Ah, poor Little Moll! 

“They’re better now again,” said Lestrade’s wife. “It makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time.” 

“Past it rather,” the eldest child answered, shutting up his book. “But I think he has walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings, mother.” 

They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once: 

“I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Little Moll upon his shoulder, very fast indeed.” 

“And so have I,” exclaimed the children. So had all. 

“But she was very light to carry,” she resumed, intent upon her work, “and her father loved her so, that it was no trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the door!” 

She hurried out to meet him; and Gregory came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young Lestrades got upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against his face, as if they said, “Don’t mind it, father. Don’t be grieved!” 

Greg was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed of Molly and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said. 

“Sunday! You went to-day, then, Greg?” said his wife. 

“Yes, my dear,” returned Greg. “I wish you could have gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you’ll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child,” he cried. “My little child!” 

He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart perhaps than they were. 

He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. Poor Greg sat down, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, when he was reconciled to what had happened, he went down again quite happy. 

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working still. Greg told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Sherlock’s doctor friend, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing that he looked a little—“just a little down you know,” said Greg, inquired what had happened to distress him. “On which,” said Greg, “for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him. ‘I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Lestrade,’ he said, ‘and heartily sorry for your good wife.’ By the bye, how he ever knew that, I don’t know.” 

“Knew what, my dear?” 

“Why, that you were a good wife,” replied Greg. 

“Everybody knows that!” smiled Molly, nudging him gently. 

“Very well observed, my dear!” chuckled Greg. “I hope they do. ‘Heartily sorry,’ Doctor Watson said, ‘for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any way,’ he said, giving me his card, ‘that’s where I live. Pray come to me.’ Now, it wasn’t,” said Greg, “for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Little Moll, and felt with us.” 

“I’m sure he’s a good soul!” said Molly. 

“You would be surer of it, my dear,” returned Greg, “if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised—mark what I say!—if he found a situation for our oldest lads.” 

“Oh!” Molly said. “Oh, no, my dear. I’m sure I’m not ready for them to be leaving us yet, no matter how good a situation Doctor Watson finds.”

“It will happen one of these days,” Greg replied, “though there’s plenty of time for that, my dear. But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Little Moll—shall we—or this first parting that there was among us?” 

“Never, father!” cried they all. 

“And I know,” said Greg, “I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild she was; although she was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget her example in doing it.” 

“No, never, father!” they all cried again. 

Mrs. Lestrade kissed him, his daughters kissed him, and his sons. 

“Spectre,” said Sherlock, quite agonized, “something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me – about that man whom we saw lying dead; if there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by that man’s death, show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!” 

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a plain bed chamber, simply furnished, and lit by a single, flickering candle. 

On the edge of the bed sat John Watson, and the expression on his countenance was one of intense misery. “I am so alone,” he was saying under his breath. “So alone.” With a shock of horror, Sherlock realized that he was holding a pistol in his lap, turning it about this way and that, with little care to his own safety. 

“I have no one to care for me in this world,” he said, “and no one to care for – not now. Not now. Everyone I love or could have loved is gone. Better to kill myself and be done with it all. The Lestrades, at least, have each other, and I shall send my effects to them, for afterwards.” 

“Spirit!” Sherlock gasped. “What can be the cause of this? A better man than John Watson has rarely walked the earth; how can he be so desolate?” 

The Spirit made no answer, but stretched his hand out and pointed to John’s face, which was now wet with tears. 

Sherlock was startled to feel a strange impulse in himself; he desired nothing more than to sit with the distraught man on the bed, to take his hand, to comfort him, and to make it his life’s work to stop him from ever feeling alone again. He even took a step forward, as if to make good on this new imperative, but the Ghost at his side took his sleeve in an iron grasp, and drew him away, out of the room, and the house, and out onto the street. 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before—though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future—into the resorts of men of science and men of business, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until besought by Sherlock to tarry for a moment. 

“This court,” said Sherlock, “through which we hurry now, is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be, in days to come!” 

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere. 

“The house is yonder,” Sherlock exclaimed. “Why do you point away?” 

The inexorable finger underwent no change. 

Sherlock hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before. 

He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering. 

A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation’s death, not life; choked up with too much burying. 

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to one. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape. 

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Sherlock, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” 

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. 

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Sherlock. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!” 

The Spirit was immovable as ever. 

Sherlock crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Sherlock Holmes. 

“Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he cried, upon his knees. 

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again. 

“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!” 

The finger still was there. 

“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!” 

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. 

“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!” 

The kind hand trembled. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” 

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him. 

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter coming Christmas Eve. 
> 
> As always, comments and feedback appreciated!


	5. The End of It.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for shameless appropriation of Dickens' text.

Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in! 

“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Sherlock repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Mycroft! Thank you for this!” 

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears. 

“They are not torn down,” cried Sherlock, folding one of his bed-curtains in his arms, “they are not torn down, rings and all. They are here—I am here—the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!” 

His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance. 

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Sherlock, laughing and crying in the same breath. “I am quite as light as a feather! A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!” 

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there: perfectly winded. 

“There’s the chair in which I took my repast!” cried Sherlock, starting off again, and going round the fireplace. “There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Mycroft entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat! There’s the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It’s all right, it’s all utterly impossible, and it all happened. Ha ha ha!” 

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs! 

“I don’t know what day of the month it is!” said Sherlock. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!” 

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious! 

“What’s to-day!” cried Sherlock, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. 

“Eh?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. 

“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Sherlock. 

“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.” 

“It’s Christmas Day!” said Sherlock to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Impossible? Nay – of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!” 

“Hallo!” returned the boy. 

“Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one, at the corner?” Sherlock inquired. 

“I should hope I did,” replied the lad. 

“An intelligent boy!” said Sherlock. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?” 

“What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy. 

“What a delightful boy!” said Sherlock. “It’s a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!” 

“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy. 

“Is it?” said Sherlock. “Go and buy it.” 

“You’re mad!” exclaimed the boy. 

“No, no,” said Sherlock, “I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I’ll give you half-a-crown!” 

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast. 

“I’ll send it to the Lestrades!” whispered Sherlock, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “He sha’n’t know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Little Moll. What a surprise it will be!” 

The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer’s man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye. 

“I shall love it, as long as I live!” cried Sherlock, patting it with his hand. “I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face. It shall forever remind me of my good brother, and the wisdom he has led me to.” 

It was a turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped ’em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax. 

“Why, it’s impossible to carry that to Camden Town,” said Sherlock. “You must have a cab.” 

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till his face was wet once more, and whether it was with tears of mirth or with regret for the time he had wasted, Sherlock could not have said. Perhaps it was with both. 

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don’t tremble while you are at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaister over it, and been quite satisfied. 

He dressed himself “all in his best,” and at last got out into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his hands behind him, Sherlock regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows said, “Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!” And Sherlock said often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears. 

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that being among the common people, and not set apart from them with a supercilious sneer, could give him so much happiness. 

He found his thoughts straying, however, with increasing regularity, to a small set of rooms and a man he knew to be keeping Christmas alone. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards John Watson’s house. 

He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it: 

“Is Dr. Watson at home?” said Sherlock to the indifferent housekeeper. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“May I go up, my dear woman?” said Sherlock. 

“He’s at his dinner, sir,” she said doubtfully. “I suppose I could show you up-stairs, but...” 

“Thank you. He knows me,” said Sherlock, with his foot already on the stair. “No need to trouble yourself.” 

He fairly leaped up the stairs, and found the door he recognized from his ghostly vision. He turned the knob gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. He was looking into the room he remembered well, and the profile of the man he cared most for in all the world. 

“John!” said Sherlock. 

Dear heart alive, how the doctor started! “Who’s that!” cried he, “who’s there?” 

“It’s I. Your friend Sherlock Holmes. I have come keep Christmas with you. Will you let me in, John?” 

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. Sherlock was made to be at home in five minutes. John built up the fire and pulled their chairs alongside. Next, he poured out brandies from a long-saved bottle, and they sat together conversing as if they had done so every night of their lives. Nothing could be heartier nor more natural. 

After an age had passed like minutes, they took their Christmas dinner; and although two grown men shared a scanty bachelor repast, now grown cold, and meant to barely satisfy one, both exclaimed over the taste and quality of the simple fare, and both were fully satisfied. 

And still, Sherlock looked around him and silently vowed that this should be John’s last Christmas in these shabby and lonely surroundings; that he should make every celebration in every year to come a true joy and pleasure for the good man, should he be blessed to have it within his power to do so. 

And then the last morsel of dinner had been consumed, and John and Sherlock drew their chairs near the fire once more, and sat in silent companionship, each separately reflecting on what a great change this Christmas had wrought. 

John looked at Sherlock in a wonderment that approached disbelief. “My dear Sherlock,” began he, “I cannot begin to think what has occurred to so change your outlook on Christmas and,” here he coloured slightly, “on our friendship. But I think the good Lord for it.” 

Sherlock spoke no reply, but silently reached for his companion’s hand. With warmth in his own cheek and a fluttering heart, he took it up in his own, and raised it reverently to his lips. 

John looked frankly up into the other’s eyes, searching out sincerity, weighing his intention. He was evidently pleased with what he saw there, for he rose and crossed the small space between them and, kneeling before Sherlock’s chair, pressed kiss after desperate kiss to Sherlock’s face, mouth, and hair.

Wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness! 

That Christmas evening was the beginning of a new life for each man; a life of acute contentment and of an ever-deepening, profound love which, once forged, no act of God or man could ever break asunder. 

But for all the happiness of his Christmas night, Sherlock was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Greg Lestrade coming late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon. 

And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Lestrade. A quarter past. No Lestrade. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Sherlock sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the office. 

His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock. 

“Hallo!” growled Sherlock, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?” 

“I am very sorry, sir,” said Lestrade. “I am behind my time.” 

“You are?” repeated Sherlock. “Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.” 

“It’s only once a year, sir,” said Lestrade. “It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.” 

“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Sherlock, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Greg such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back; “and therefore I am about to raise your salary!” 

Greg trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Sherlock down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat. 

“A merry Christmas, Greg!” said Sherlock, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Greg, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Greg! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Greg Lestrade!” 

* * *

Sherlock was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Little Moll, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. And too, he was a good companion to John Watson, as John Watson was to him; for each had lived a long and solitary and unhappy life already, and was not inclined to take his current happiness for granted. They lived as doting husbands in private, and as treasured friends in public. Some people laughed to see the alteration in Sherlock, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. 

Sherlock Holmes had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Little Moll observed, God bless Us, Every One!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, everyone! <3 <3 <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Seasonal Sonata (in prose)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2756984) by [ButterscotchCandybatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterscotchCandybatch/pseuds/ButterscotchCandybatch)




End file.
